Question

Identify a preventable health concern in which you are interested, such as dengue fever or type 2 diabetes. Using Laverack’s ladder of community-based interaction as a guide, describe three key strategies that you might use to engage with a community to implement a program to address this health concern.

Answer 1

Preventable health concern for me is diabetes mellitus type 2.There has been a tremendous rise in this diseases recently...This is preventable by changing our life style and food habits.

Three key strategies used to implement a programme

1. Education about the diseases This is important part . If the society is educated using simple language. plays. interactive sessions the proggrame will be helpful in preventing the diseases.. If a society has good knowledge of the diseases they will readily accept the changes.This will enhance the effectiveness of tne programme . Primary and secondary schools can be involved with the aim of bringing about change in society by educating young people .

2. Community participation :- It is one of the domains of sucess of any programme. It is a process by which people are enabled to become actively and genuinely involved in defining the issues of concern to them, in making decisions about factors that affect their lives, in formulating and implementing policies, in planning, developing and delivering services and in taking action to achieve change.¹ it is important in identifying needs, assessing assets and agreeing on shared vision. Diabetes can be prevented by changing life style, decreasing stress and healthy eating. If this is put forth by community people then it will have a greater impact.

Health promotion works through concrete and effective community action in setting priorities, making decisions, planning strategies and implementing them to achieve better health.

3. Empowerment

·   The heart of sucess of a programme is the empowerment of communities, their ownership and control of their own endeavours and destinies.²

The concept of empowerment, although arguably overshadowed in recent years by discussions of social capital, community capacity and other constructs, remains important in understanding the processes of social influence and transformation of power relations as unavoidable features of health promotion.³ It is defined by Laverack ) as a ‘process by which relatively powerless people work together to increase control over events that determine their lives and health’empowerment . He stresses that empowerment cannot be bestowed by others, but that those who have power (e.g. health practitioners) and those who want it (e.g. clients) must co-operate to create the conditions necessary to make empowerment possible. This can be done by building capacity and enabling social action to address the underlying social, structural and economic conditions that impact on health. If community participation and empowerment strategies are to be meaningful, they must be developed coherently and at different levels

• support for grassroots community-level development and capacity-building;
• the establishment and strengthening of networks and infrastructures for communities and professionals working to enable participation; and

a commitment to meaningful organizational development, to ensure that grassroots action for participation feeds into and influences the mainstream.⁴

References :-

1. (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2002a
2. WHO, 1986
3. Laverack and Wallerstein, 2001
4. Laverack, 2006